Nuremberg Airport (, marketed as Albrecht Dürer Airport Nürnberg after the painter Albrecht Dürer; ) is an international airport of the Franconian metropolitan area of Nuremberg and the second-busiest airport in Bavaria after Munich Airport. In 2025, the airport handled 4,508,700 passengers, the highest volume in its history, surpassing the previous record of 4,466,864 set in 2018. It was Germany's 9th busiest airport in 2025. It is located approximately north of Nuremberg's city centre and offers flights within Germany as well as to European metropolitan and leisure destinations, especially along the Mediterranean Sea, to the Canary Islands, Turkey and to North Africa. The airport is owned and operated by Flughafen Nürnberg GmbH, in turn owned 50% by the state of Bavaria and 50% by the city of Nuremberg.
History
Before the current airport Prior to World War II, the Nuremberg area was served by a number of airfields in quick succession, all of which became inadequate in the face of the rapid development of aviation or fell victim to the same wars that had played a part in their construction. The first airfield in the area was built in 1915 by the Bavarian Army in the neighboring town of Fürth as a military air base. This Old Atzenhof Airport (Fürth Airfield) () remained in civilian use (the Versailles Treaty forbade Germany from maintaining an airforce but was silent on civil aviation) throughout the Weimar Republic until the new Nazi government opened the new Marienberg Airport () in Nuremberg. While the plans to build Marienberg Airport had existed before the 1933 power grab of the Nazis and it served supposedly civilian purposes, it was intended from its opening as a military airfield, which became openly admitted policy in 1935 with the establishment of the Luftwaffe, which maintained a base at Nuremberg-Marienberg airport. Largely destroyed in the war, the site of the former Marienberg airport, located a few km due south of the current airport, is today a public park. The former Atzenhof airfield was taken over by the US Army after the war and is today used as a golf course with some of the erstwhile airport buildings still extant.
Post-WWII After World War II the US Armed Forces (Nuremberg being in the American Zone of Occupation) would use the main boulevard of the Nazi Party Rallying Grounds as a makeshift runway for their purposes, including the flights to and from the Nuremberg trials. However, even after Germans were allowed to partake in civil aviation again, that makeshift infrastructure was limited to use by the American military. Being thus left without a "proper" usable civilian airport — from 1950 to the completion of the new permanent airport passenger flights serving the area had to land at a private airfield () of a Fürth based company near the current endpoint of the U1 subway line, Fürth Hardhöhe station (A small plaque in the access tunnel to the subway station records that history.) The need to build an airport equipped for the demands of the rapidly growing aviation sector, in a country experiencing strong post-war economic growth, became pressing, and the young Federal Republic of Germany engaged in its first airport building project.
Early years at the current site Nuremberg Airport was the first airport constructed in West Germany after World War II. It was inaugurated on 6 April 1955. Nuremberg Airport was in the American Zone of Occupation during German partition and to this day some US Army Bases in the vicinity (most notably U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwoehr) make use of the airport to fly in cargo and soldiers – the latter also on commercial flights.
In 1960, the number of passengers at Nuremberg Airport reached 100,000 for the first time. In 1961 the runway was extended from , and in 1968 the runway was extended to its present length of , allowing the then largest airliner in existence – the Boeing 747 – to use it. On 12 July 1970, a Boeing 747 landed at the airport for the first time and attracted 20,000 visitors. While a Boeing 747 used in passenger service at NUE is a rare sight, to this day freight flights using the largest serially produced civilian cargo plane take off and land at NUE with some regularity. In 1969 the then Munich Riem Airport shut down its main runway for maintenance for three weeks, which meant that most flights were redirected to Nuremberg Airport. This necessitated some upgrades to the existing infrastructure which cost some two million DM ().
The apron was enlarged in 1977 and in 1981 a new passenger terminal with an observation deck and a restaurant replaced the previous building. In December 1986, the one million passenger mark was passed for the first time.
The local entrepreneur and partial heir to the :de:Rudolf Wöhrl SE, Hans Rudolf Wöhrl is associated with the airport in multiple roles, not least his involvement in the 1974 founding of the first private competition to Lufthansa on the German domestic market :de:Nürnberger Flugdienst (NFD) which had a base of operations at Nuremberg Airport and ultimately wound up as part of Eurowings in 1992. Even after the end of his involvement with NFD, Wöhrl remained active in aviation and founded or took over multiple airlines as well as launching unsuccessful bids to take over struggling or bankrupt airlines like Air Berlin when it went bankrupt in 2017/2018.
The 1990s In 1997/98, Air Berlin established a winter hub at the airport, making it the airline's second most important tourist interchange airport, after Palma de Mallorca.
The new control tower commenced operations in 1999 and the U-Bahn station was opened. The extension of the U-Bahn line U2 cost 95 million Deutsche Mark () of which the airport paid 18.6 million – the rest was paid for by the state government of Bavaria and the federal government of Germany. Due to the extension to the airport opening on the same day as that to Ziegelstein, some press reports mistake the overall 180 million DM figure for that of the extension to the airport alone. While the city did not pay any of the cost of the stretch to the airport, it did contribute 15 million DM for the 85 million DM construction cost of the stretch Herrnhütte-Ziegelstein. According to press reports approximately 30 million passengers used the U-Bahn extension to the airport in its first 20 years of operation.
Early 21st century In 2005 Nuremberg Airport celebrated its 50th anniversary with 45,000 visitors.
In April 2013, Air Berlin permanently shut down its winter seasonal hub in Nuremberg which had been maintained for several years.
In December 2014 the airport was named after Albrecht Dürer, who was born in Nuremberg. Subsequently, the metro station was adorned with reproductions of Dürer works.
In October 2016, Ryanair announced it would open a base at Nuremberg Airport consisting of two aircraft while four additional routes were inaugurated. In the same month, Air Berlin announced it would close its maintenance facilities at the airport due to cost cutting and restructuring measures. Shortly after, Germania announced it would open a new base at Nuremberg Airport consisting of one aircraft which served several new leisure routes. 2017 saw the bankruptcy of Air Berlin ending a trend of Air Berlin withdrawing service from the airport with the grounding of all Air Berlin flights. In January 2018, Eurowings announced it would establish a base at the airport consisting of one aircraft and four new routes as well as increased frequencies.airliners.de – Eurowings opens base in Nuremberg (German) 21 January 2018 After the demise of Germania in early 2019, TUI fly Deutschland announced it would base aircraft in Nuremberg to take over several leisure destinations.aerotelegraph.com – "Sundair and TUIfly help at Dresden and Nuremberg" 7 Februar 2019 In late 2019 Ryanair announced the closure of their base in Nuremberg effective with the end of the winter schedule. The lack of available aircraft in light of the Boeing 737 Max groundings was cited as a reason at the time. Also in 2019 Corendon airlines announced a new base at NUE with over 50 weekly departures in the summer season. The company further expressed their commitment to the region with a special aircraft livery Boeing 737-800 honouring local football team 1. FC Nürnberg with whom they entered a partnership in 2020.
Nuremberg formerly had an extensive domestic network of which (as of 2024) only one direct route remains. Lufthansa decided not to resume its vital hub connection to Munich Airport in the wake of the pandemic, while its subsidiary Eurowings terminated all of its domestic links to Berlin (the since defunct Tegel Airport), Düsseldorf Airport, and Hamburg Airport. This leads to the circumstance that every domestic route from Nuremberg has been cancelled, with the sole exception of Lufthansas hub-feeder to Frankfurt Airport which is operated five times per day. While in 2019 there had been 450,000 domestic passengers to/from Nuremberg, by 2023 that market had – with the noted exception of the hub-feeder flights to Frankfurt – "all but disappeared" – despite overall passenger numbers in Nuremberg reaching 96% of the 2019 level in that year (better than the German average of roughly 80%).
While Air Berlin still operated one of its hubs at Nuremberg Airport, NUE was connected - at least seasonally - with fourteen German airports. These included, additionally to the ones mentioned above, the likes of Bremen Airport, Cologne Bonn Airport, Dortmund Airport, Dresden Airport, Erfurt Weimar Airport, Hanover Airport, Leipzig Halle Airport, Münster Osnabrück Airport, Paderborn Lippstadt Airport, Rostock Laage Airport and Sylt Airport.
Furthermore, Nuremberg Airport has also lost a lot of connectivity to European hubs with Brussels Airlines (to Brussels-Zaventem Airport), Finnair (to Helsinki Vantaa Airport), LOT Polish Airlines (to Warsaw Chopin Airport), and Scandinavian Airlines (to Copenhagen Airport) all not offering their respective services anymore. In 2023 Lufthansa Group also announced a further reduction in service to Nuremberg, cancelling the routes of their wholly owned subsidiaries Swiss and Austrian to their respective hubs Zurich Airport and Vienna Schwechat Airport, respectively. British Airways also ended its operations to Nuremberg in early 2024, previously offering a hub connection to London Heathrow.
Covid-19 and beyond In June 2021, Lufthansa announced the termination of its route to Munich Airport, a flight covering around taking less than 30 minutes, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and after facing longstanding criticism from an environmental standpoint. It has been replaced by a coach service which however lacks usage by customers. During the same time, flights via other hubs than Munich registered increased passenger numbers.
In August 2021, the airport announced plans to build another cargo center with of hangar space and of office space, with completion scheduled for 2023.
In 2021 Ryanair announced the re-establishment of their previously closed base at NUE in light of re-emerging demand after more and more destination countries had relaxed or removed COVID-19 restrictions. The 737-MAX groundings, cited as a reason for the abandonment of the base in 2019, had also ended by that point in time, increasing the number of planes Ryanair had available. In 2023 Ryanair opened a maintenance hangar for the aircraft based at NUE.
In 2023 Eurowings announced the return of a base in Nuremberg. Starting with the winter 2023/2024 schedule, one aircraft will be based in Nuremberg year-round with four destinations served in the winter and summer respectively.
The travel company TUI reported in early 2024 that based on their analysis of google reviews up to July 2023, Nuremberg Airport is the most popular international airport in Germany, receiving an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars.
Facilities
Runway and apron